many stories use such plot devices as extra strength hormones designed to put such a powerful dose of hormones that they will produce almost instant results. Even im guilty of using that in my most recent addition to one of my stories. Its interesting but from what I understand it cant really happen.
from what I have read, hormones in the bloodstream must be carefully monitored. the body is very sensitive and if the hormone level is too high for the body it wont produce faster results. That will just poison the body and produce toxic shock or even possible fatal results. Am I correct or is that really possible
Comments
In Reality
Jengirls absolutely correct
Any time a chemical is introduced into your endocrinology system blood test should be conducted to ensure your system can handle even the smallest dose. Our bodys tend to pass excess of things off as waste. The liver cannot filter all of the excess and may stop working.
Fact and fiction are much different. I am glad I have a good endocrinologist and an understanding internal medicine specialist.
Jill Micayla
Be kinder than necessary,Because everyone you meet
Is fighting some kind of battle.
Jill Micayla
Be kinder than necessary,Because everyone you meet
Is fighting some kind of battle.
Effects may vary...
may vary from individual user to user, but massive overdose of any steroid may include....
Liver damage, increased blood pressure, blood clotting, stroke, stress to the kidneys, urinary tract irritation, digestive and gastrointestinal tract irritation, damage to micro-vascular structures (anywhere in the body) and increased production of and smelly urine.
"I'm not a doctor, but I like to play one"
Michelle
PS. Of course, these are the *one week* effects.
I have a question about hormones treatment in fiction
For your story, a combination of hormones, T-cells and nanites can explain the transformation as well as the child being intersexed to some degree.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
its ok stan :)
I am staying with the extra strength estrogen. it may not be realistic but who said a fictional story has to be 100 percent realistic.
All of the above, and more. Too much of anything can be harmful
It isn't just excessive amounts of estrogen and/or other 'female' hormones that need to be monitored.
Spironlactone, given to depress the testosterone level, is also dangerous. I was started on 50mG a day, and then moved up to 100mG, but when my Potassium level started to rise, it was dropped to 50, where it remains. I know, many girls take 100, 200, or more, without problems., but my doctor saw one and cut me back.
A few months later, I learned why. NY roommate, also an author here, was taking the level prescribed for her over 18 months before, but was no longer being monitored. She began to have extreme weakness, and I ended up taking her to ER. I had to have help getting her into a wheel chair to go into the hospital. When they took a blood sample, and saw her potassium level, they panicked.
A normal, or “safe†level of potassium is between 3.7 and 5.2
Levels above 6.0 mg/dl are considered dangerous because the nerves begin to fire randomly, and can lead to irregular heartbeats.
Levels above 7.5 mg/dl are considered life threatening.
Hers was 8.6!!!!! all because it had been building up, unmonitored.
This is only one of many things that need to be monitored when one is on HRT, which for us, usually includes at least 2 medications.
Safe levels for one person can be unsafe for another.
But giving large doses of almost any medication or vitamin, MIGHT cause problems. Too much of anything we put into the body can be dangerous.
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
excessive amounts of hormones can have other effects, too...
- like blindness, or at least a substantial decrease in the quality of vision
- like varicose veins or other thromboembolitic disasters
- like skin pigmentation
- like photo-sensitivity
- like retention of water and other bloating
- like various neurological problems (rotor syndrome etc)
in my youth, i very stupidly took an excessive amount of progesterone and estrogen (premarin, oestrone) for about a year. I got bloated, permanently damaged my eyesight (although fortunately not enough to make me blind - just longsighted), put on a lot of weight (and not just in my ass) got really ugly, bulgy-type veins, and suffered a substantial rise in blood pressure. I didn't do permanent damage to my kidneys, but it seems like it was a near-run thing
in short, taking too much estrogen and/or progesterone makes you ugly, not beautiful.
if i'd been stupid enough to take a specific kind of progesterone (prometrium) i might actually have suffered increased androgenization rather than feminization. the body has all sorts of feedback loops, and sometimes taking too much of a particular hormone can cause the body to stop processing the extra and convert it to something else. or it can cause your adrenal glands to start behaving oddly.
there's a reason pregnant women are at so much risk of terrible things happening - it's not just due to carrying extra weight gain. and if you wonder why a woman who has had a child generally looks about 5 years older than one who hasn't, look to the hormonal overload. (ya, i know kids wear you out, but pregnancy wears you out faster).
to be attractive, both men and women need a balance of hormones in their system. too much of any one hormone is a bad thing.
i was lucky enough to stop before i did too much damage to myself.
not as think as i smart i am
There are Vitamins and Vitamins Though
Holly,
it is perfectly safe to take even 100 x the "recommended daily intake" of the WATER SOLUBLE Vitamins, the B group and the C. This is because they flow out as fast as they flow in, being water soluble. Indeed, for them to have an actual therapeutic effect, they NEED to be given in high doses, because they are needed inside the cells, so to force them inside you need a high amount in the blood to get the osmotic effect ( passing through the cell walls' semipermeable membranes into the cell where the concentration is lower) They are used for metabolising sugars (Krebbs Cycle) and are one half of the enzymes that do this to provide cells with the energy to metabolize with, and every time the enzyme does its job it ends up splitting into two parts, one being a protein and the other the water soluble vitamin, some of which will leak out whenver the concentration outside in the blood is lower than inside in the cell!
The fat soluble vitamins however, the A, D and E, can get stored inside cells and can be actually TOXIC at high enough doses. Early polar explorers who shot and ate Polar Bears, when they used the Liver died, poisoned by the amount of Vitamine D in the Polar Bear Liver. Babies in the womb of mothers fed too much Vitamin D can have birth defects.
On the other hand, the mental hospitals even today are filled with folk who if given daily high doses of Vitamine B complex and Vitamin C, become perfectly lucid again and can come off all the tranquilizers etc and are safe to send home. Anybody wanting to know more about this can look up the works published by Dr Johnathan Gould, around the 1960s-'70s, some with little me as co-author.
Briar
Briar
As has been noted...
As has been noted by many others, an "overdose" of hormones CAN have toxic effects to various parts of the body. And, at least according to my doc, will NOT have an increased feminizing effect... Per my doctor, feminization (no matter the dosage) is a gradual process. She also indicated that for MOST people the peak level of feminization occurs by the three year point. Yes, some continue SOME after that (& it's not uncommon to add a cup size following SRS/GCS). But an equal number (about) have reached the peak effect of the hormones before the three year point. (This is all M2F... The data's different for F2M.)
There's also differences, depending on estrogen, estroidial (not quite the same thing I now understand) and progesterone... As well as testoserone level.
I've a VERY unscientific timeline for the personally noticeable effects for the first several months - and, it's just that several months... If you'd like to see it, let me know.
For me - a mega-dose of hormones to "kick start" things doesn't make much sense and is something that has turned me off in some stories. I've been able to go on and read some of them, but they were otherwise REALLY engaging stories. I'm sorry to say that if such an event happened very early in a story (before it had grabbed me) I've been known to give up and quit before getting very far. (Forced Fem is the same way with me these days... And, the "feeling" at the beginning of Camp K... was almost enough for me to give up on it.)
My 2 cents - if it's worth that much.
Anne
Horomones
I started with oral Estrodial @ 2 mg and tried twice to double up and both times wound up on the psych ward. Of course at the time, I was on antidepresants at above clinical dosages. I finally concluded the psych meds were making me worse and stopped. Of course I had not been a life long psych patient, I'd just had a normal psych break.
I have heard of people taking as high as 20 mg and I think one of them is dead.
The put me on spiro too and when I saw the side effects, I just had a castration. I had very minimal breast growth with pills. because of kidney damage due to an e-coli infection, they put me on Vivele dot at about a tenth the dose, and my breasts liked that very much. I now have between B and C breasts. Of course they still look like tranny breasts and will not let down enough to look natural for a while. Some have thought I had implants.
I doubt that you can get much growth any sooner than 6 months.
Gwendolyn
Instead of dosage
consider the type of hormone. Fictionally, there may be a type of hormone that may be 'tuned' to some poor schmuck that makes him 'sprout' like crazy or he is just genetically susceptible. Even in reality there is a slight performance difference in how people react to various forms of estradiol though I suspect it is a genetic basis and also how old they are.
I have a friend to basically got breasts and hips and lost all body hair in her 20s by taking very low dose estradiol. She stopped due to issues and transitioned in her 30s and that did not happen again.
Kim
Reality/Fiction
REALITY: Taking a high dose of hormones will most likely be toxic. It most likely won't produce faster results, and it's hardly worth the risk.
Patience is bitter, but it's fruit is sweet.
FICTION: If you apply too much real-life science to a fictional situation, god kills a catgirl. Please, think of the poor innocent catgirls, and do not apply too much real-life science to fictional situations.